Lovin' My Crafts: Mother's Day Upcycled Tin Cans

For Mother's Day this year, I decided to take the "a gift from the heart is best" approach.  While I would love to buy all the mother's in my life a fancy present to celebrate their day, my budget just doesn't allow that.  So this year I turned to some upcycling ideas.  I wouldn't say that I'm a pack rat but I definitely have a hard time throwing something away if I feel like it has another use.  Right now I've been trying to figure out what I could do with tin cans.

This is what I came up with.

I first washed the cans in warm water with vinegar and dish soap.  I dried them with a clean towel and then let them air dry.

Once completely dry, I painted them with Krylon Acrylic Latex Enamel which is supposed to work on metal, plastic, glass and just about anything else.  In order to eliminate as many paintbrush streaks as possible, I used a sponge brush which worked really well.

I have small hands so I was able to put the can over my hand and then twist my wrist as I painted.  That also worked great because I could paint the whole can without getting fingerprints everywhere.  I did two coats of paint which covered nicely without making it too thick.  The paint requires that you wait six hours between coats and really needs about 24 hours to dry without feeling tacky so plan ahead and make sure to give yourself enough time.

While the painted cans ended up being pretty neat all by themselves, I decided to put a band of ribbon and a button on them to make it look a little nicer than just a painted tin can.  I hot glued both on but before gluing the button I wound threat through the holes so that it would look like it was sewn on to the ribbon.

To complete my mother's day gift I planted flowers in the cans.  I didn't add much extra dirt so that the recipients could either keep them in the can or pull them out and add the flowers to their own gardens.  These ones went to my mom, my husband's mom and my sister-in-law.  All in all, I think they turned out pretty cute for my first upcycling project.